William Spence

William Guthrie Spence (7 August 1846-13 December 1926) was an Australian Labor Party (later Nationalist Party of Australia) MP for Darling from 29 March 1901 to 5 May 1917, preceding Arthur Blakeley, and for Darwin from 30 June 1917 to 13 December 1919, succeeding Charles Howroyd and preceding George Bell.

Biography
William Guthrie Spence was born in Eday, Orkney Islands, Scotland in 1846, and his family arrived in Geelong, Victoria, Australia in 1852. A pivotal figure in the Australian trade union movement, he helped found a number of unions until he became secretary of the Amalgamated Miners' Association in 1882 and of the Amalgamated Shearers' Union in 1886. He was a moving force behind the formation of the Australian Workers' Union, which for a long time was the biggest single Australian trade union. He was its secretary from 1894 to 1898 and president from 1898 to 1917. A strong advocate of using trade unionism to support the political Labor movement, he became a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1898. He entered the federal parliament in 1902, but had to transfer his allegiance to the Nationalist Party of Australia because of his vote for compulsory military service overseas in 1916.